I’ve been pretty vigilant in watching where I’m putting my attention so that I stay out of fear during these times and focus on what brings me joy and is important in my world. So today after a meditation I went to do my groceries. We have a small grocery store here on Gabe but they have been awesome with wiping things down, controlling the flow of folks in the store, writing happy sayings in chalk on the sidewalk as you come in and out and also putting tape down on the floor indicating the flow of people traffic as well as marking out the 2m distance everywhere.

I’m now in the meat section and a woman comes up and stands right next to me, yes right next to me. Out of my mouth comes ‘Seriously!’ Now this wasn’t the interested ‘Hmmm Seriously?’, or the I can’t believe it that’s so interesting ‘Wow Seriously?’, no this was the ‘What the f__k dic_hea_ ‘Seriously?’, yup a whole lot of anger and incredulity spewed out of my mouth before I had a chance to filter it, all in one word. She looked at me (I’m not sure with shock or not), but I realized I had just sent a whole lot of anger her way, so I tried to reign it back in with ‘Please watch your distance’ in a neutral tone (I think). She was angry and stormed away, oh well shit happens. Also I’m apparently not quite as zenn as I thought!

What happened next was what interests me. As I was driving home, the guilt over sending that much anger her way, when she may have just made a mistake having perhaps been in lala land and not even noticed where she was going, and I had also made a mistake in the grocery isle not seeing the ‘arrows’ on the floor for people flow, and gone the wrong way until I saw them. So mistakes happen. I then started sending her forgiveness and love via the ether, I did it a few times to balance things out. Then I realized I needed to forgive myself, hmmmm not so easy. Much easier to forgive her than myself.

It reminded me that in our shamanic teachings we always forgive ourselves first, as the flogging of ourselves over mistakes has such an impact to every moment. Also when we don’t do our forgiveness work the mistakes and the guilt over them accumulates snowballing into all kinds of nasty consequences in our lives.

So a reminder that mistakes are normal, it’s how we learn and grow.

Self Forgiveness is essential to learning from those mistakes, and getting better at not flogging ourselves over them.

I’ve taken a chill pill figuratively speaking, done my forgiveness work and now all is well in my world again.

So is the sky falling? Well no, we definitely have serious shit to get through, but if you allow your mind to focus on fear, panic and the constant barrage of media announcements, well ……….

Then you are ‘The Bitch’ of COVID-19 and I don’t know about you, but I’m bigger than COVID-19 and I’m not allowing a friggin’ virus to take my power!

So yes,
~ Do your due diligence in finding out the facts
~ Take necessary precautions
~ Be a fabulous Gabriolan and take care of each other (Vancouverite, Torontonian, etc.)
~ Checking on those at risk or alone
~ Then let it go.

If you allow yourselfto keep this virusas the focus of your attentionthen that is where you will be.

Day in and day out,creating stress in all your bodies,mental, emotional and physical,this is what impacts your immune systemmaking you more susceptible to disease.

So part of necessary precautions from my perspective is:
~ Keep calm
~ De-stress
~ Kick paranoia to the curb when somebody coughs
~ Has just been in Vancouver
~ Or has a cold,
~ Don’t take all available resources out of the grocery stores etc.
leave some for others.

We are Gabriolans,
we have a long history of taking care of each other,
of supporting each other,
let’s keep doing that…….

Not giving in to fear and panic.
Even if some of us get sick,
we will get through this better
by being our usual kind compassionate selves.

One of the reasons I have stayed on Gabriola
was for exactly this eventuality,
that when the shit hits the fan,
I know there will be community support.

So …… step up,take control of your brain,your internal dialogue,watch what you watch, read, say and do.

I’m not saying it’s easy,
but I do think it’s necessary for me anyway,
to keep living and not just start existing
as COVID-19’s Bitch!

Disclaimer: I am not a scientist, I have studied the subject of neurochemistry in relationship to addiction, but these are my own conclusions and opinions coming from that studying and my experience.Do your own homework, remember you are your own best teacher!
I am not the font of all knowledge or the oracle (Yet! lol, I need a few hundred years, crap do I have to become a vampire …. damn, well it might not be so bad!) I’m a mere mortal with some life experience which once healed, ended up with a touch of wisdom. (Well I like to think so anyway.)

I’ve mentioned being ‘at choice’ in my previous posts. Within the context of addiction this means how much will power do I have at my disposal in this moment in order to apply my sobriety strategies successfully.

Here’s an exert from my previous blog post:
“Another huge piece of unwrapping the puzzle for me anyway was with a biofeedback machine, from the HeartMath institute. With a simple program on the computer I was to get the program into ‘coherence’, the sweet spot where I was happy. So once I had that down, I started to play with my thoughts to see where some of my triggers were. I got the machine into coherence and thought one word ‘Cocaine’, my coherence vanished into the toilet, that didn’t surprise me, to this day 11 years later, I get butterflies in the stomach thinking the word.
What did surprise me, was that even though I got right back to thinking the thoughts that got me into coherence the first time, it took 3X as long to get me back to my happy place. This was shocking and illuminating to me. No wonder when we use ‘whatever’, the ability to stop gets harder and harder. We are less and less ‘at choice’, and this brings us to neurochemistry. ”

So to explain we need to get a bit sciencey which I actually love.

We need to start at the very beginning of your life, which starts in utero.
There used to be a belief that our neurochemistry was set at birth and that was that. Now we know better, we know about the brain’s plasticity. The brain can change and heal, yes you heard me. Now that doesn’t give you a free pass to go and drink yourself into oblivion thinking that all the cells your are killing will heal. (Yes I know some of you went there, don’t bullshit an ex-bullshiter).

From the time we are fully formed in utero to approx. 6 yrs old all experiences from the child’s perspective create a reaction in the brain’s neurochemistry. Perceived positive experiences make it rise and perceived negative experiences make it drop. (I’m sure it’s far more complicated that that, but in simple terms ….). Then around 6 yrs old the neurochemistry sets to the average of all those experiences.

Now the word perceived is very important as these experiences are from the child’s perspective, not necessarily the truth (whatever that means, and I will not go down that particular rabbit hole!). So a child that is ill and ends up in the hospital for days, may experience abandonment due to their parents not being able to stay with them the whole time. They are actually not abandoned, but we come from our perspective of reality even when little. I imagine many parents when playing hide and seek with their little child had the experience of their child being totally shocked when you found them easily. You found them easily because you could see a part of their body. When the child is very young, if they can’t see you they think you can’t see them, and are astounded when you find them because even though part of their body was clearly visible to you, they cannot yet imagine that. “How did you find me mommy?” I loved those moments with my child, absolutely precious.

So your neurochemistry is now set, but where did it set? I have a hypothesis that addicts that prefer booze and pot, (downers, they chill you out) have their neurochemistry set higher than non-addicts, and addicts who prefer stimulants like cocaine, (They ramp you up) have their neurochemistry set too low. This is purely speculation but I like my theory, would that someone does a research paper on this, I’d love to find out. If I am correct it would also help create better pharmaceuticals that target more accurately, rather than the hit or miss that seems to be the norm at the moment. Not that I’m advocate for the pharmaceutical industry far from it, but some medication is good, it’s not all black and white in life.

So regardless of where your neurochemistry is set, the more you use your addiction of choice, the more it affects your neurochemistry. As illuminated with the HeartMath biofeedback machine even the word, of my favourite substance affected my neurochemistry, imagine what actually using if for hours did. Then (I’ll use cocaine as it is what I most familiar with), you crash once you stop using it. In particular your dopamine crashes, as cocaine is a dopamine reuptake inhibitor which is why it makes you feel so damn good. It jacks your dopamine up and then stops it from coming down. Now you awake with a cocaine hangover, which means your dopamine is in the proverbial toilet, which means you are severely depressed neurochemically and otherwise. Which lasts from my experience 3 days with day 2 being the worst. Now think back to the first blog post about my experience as an addict, add to that this information …… and shitballs if you have no compassion now you are the spawn of Voldemort and do not have a heart!

To illuminate the ‘at choice’ concept I’m going to use a neurochemistry set point scale of 1 – 20, 10 being the average for non-addicts. Say before I started using cocaine my neurochemistry was generally (yes it does fluctuate) set at 8. Then I use cocaine, it skyrockets to 16, then I stop and it plummets to 4. Then once I’ve gone through the depression stage after not using, it goes back up but only to 7 not my usual setting of 8. Then I use cocaine, it skyrockets to 16, then I stop and it plummets to 3. Then once I’ve gone through the depression stage after not using, it goes back up but only to 6 not my usual setting of 8. Then I use cocaine, it skyrockets to 16, then I stop and it plummets to 3. Then once I’ve gone through the depression stage after not using, it goes back up but only to 5 not my usual setting of 8. Getting the idea, I’m making the numbers up to show a cycle, do not take these numbers as factual they are not. I tried to make a fancy ass diagram to illuminate this, but once I started all the other factors made things much too complicated for me to draw out. As one needs to add to that the knowledge that it takes longer and longer to get back to normal, that the drugs effects wane and more and more is needed, depression increases, that stresses play a role, on and on. Well that’s one rolling ball than never mind ‘gathering no moss’, will just explode at some point. The proverbial ‘bottoming out’, straw that broke the camels back, etc. happens.

So no matter what strategies I use for sobriety, at each stage I have less and less chance that my strategies will be successful, no matter how much I intellectually want to not use, physically my neurochemistry is handicapping me. I am less ‘at choice’.

So …… yes I take full responsibility for choosing to use cocaine, and yes I chose addiction as a way to numb my pain, the pain that I had before I started using addiction as a self medicating strategy. I started numbing pain when I was very little, with food. Then came cigarettes at 13, then pot at 18. I fought them all successfully on and off throughout my life. It wasn’t until I was 40 that I tried cocaine and knew with the very first line that I was well and truly screwed. I had found the substance that hit my sweet spot of numbing that pain, and having battled addiction for as long as I could remember, I didn’t think I would win this one. Thankfully I was wrong.

Hopefully now you have learnt something new about addiction and why it is so hard to overcome it. Addicts need our help and support when they ask for it. They have to recreate their world from scratch with a neurochemical imbalance, depression and choosing to stop using the thing that made life tolerable. They have to face and feel a lifetime of pain and heal.

Do not try and rescue an addict or force them into treatment, it will not work in the long term, addicts need to make that choice themselves. If you feel that you have to rescue or force them into treatment, take a big look in the mirror, because you are not actually doing it for them, even if you think you are. You are doing it for you. That might be hard to hear, you may be calling ‘bullshit’, but underlying everything we do, is a motivation that leads right back to us.

For my part, my motivation for this series on addiction I knew wasn’t to just to help addicts and non-addicts alike. I knew because when that person talked about addicts with disgust and loathing (see 1st blog post on addiction) I had an uncomfortable reaction. That was my red flag. If I had completely healed my issues around addiction the disgust and loathing would not have created a reaction in me. I would have know it was just their stuff without any emotional reaction other than compassion. I know this to be true from all the healing work I have done.

It has been through writing these posts that what lurked beneath …. has become clear. What I now know, is underneath my desire to write these posts, I was hoping for forgiveness, hoping for acceptance from outside myself. (Do not give it to me, you will not be helping!) Trying once again to dislodge feelings of inadequacy, judgement, shame and blame through others acceptance. It was exactly this dance that I did with my parents as a young child, changing who I was, in order to be loved. That was how I wounded myself, so much so, that I needed to numb the pain of my own betrayal.

I did not realize this when I started this series, I thought that layer of the proverbial onion was healed, but alas it was lurking in my subconscious, I did not want to see it. However …. hello, bonjour there it was.

Now I once again have done my healing work around my shit, healing a little more, and become a more balanced human. Grateful for the person who unknowingly pushed my buttons. They brought the next piece in my healing journey front and centre, and I am grateful to myself for seeing it.

So in my previous blog post I said I would tell you how I got successfully sober, I did everything listed below and more. My ‘story’ of that time is really not important, and I have told it before. Right now I do not need to revisit that whole story to share the juice of sobriety.

Suffice as to say ….
I was in deep addiction, I manifested dropping the bottom out of all my basic needs support systems, couldn’t pay the rent, nowhere to go, disillusioned with even considering I could get sober again for the umpteenth time, thought I had tried everything, year long addiction program, self help, healing ceremonies and rituals, leaving my addictive mate over and over again, and going back to him over and over again, I was hope free. However …. I had an amazing compassionate supportive circle of people in my life. My closest shamanic sister said the magic words I probably couldn’t have heard from anyone else.
“You can’t get sober and hold it staying in your life!” So I asked for help from my shamanic teachers, which led to a ‘Yes be out in BC on our land in 3 weeks, leave your car, I know you can do it, goodbye’ (I lived in Ottawa at the time). So, I closed up 3 business, sold, recycled and stored the balance of my possessions in about 3 different friends places, got gifted money from clients and my mom, broke up with my mate, kissed my adult daughter and family goodbye, and landed in BC 3 weeks later. Not quite sure how the heck I’d pulled it off. Ever seen ‘Galaxy Quest’ when the main character get’s shot from the spaceship to earth in the ‘jelly capsule’? Remember his reactions when he landed ….. same!
AND then the healing in sobriety began.

I have a lot of information below. Beware the dreaded overwhelm. If you feel so inclined pick one thing to try initially, do not set yourself up for failure by putting unrealistic expectations on yourself. Getting to sobriety is a journey that you start in addiction. Slowly, slowly you gain wisdom, knowledge and enough experience to get to successful sobriety. Remember you are always doing the best you can in each moment, even when it doesn’t look pretty!Sometimes it helps to see the little innocent child you were, help her/him/they to heal, get a photo, stick it somewhere to tap into that energy. Be gentle with yourself, as often as you can, and if you can’t perhaps that can be a goal?

Addiction is a way to numb painIt is not in the substance or behaviour it’s in the brain

There is one underlying principle to sobriety, it is the ability to feel your pain and heal the traumas that have/are creating the pain.

Which if you could’ve done it alone you would have.
How many times have you tried ….. lots I am betting
You are not weak, it is not a matter of self control
You are brave, you are strong, you do battle every day in order to survive
You are warrior even if you do not feel that way right now

So you want to get sober ….Are you doing it for you?

Getting sober for others, or because you think/feel you ‘should’ is a waste of time and energy, and just layers more guilt, shame and blame on top of that huge pile you’ve already accumulated each time you do not succeed.

Set yourself up for success:
~ Go for sobriety when you desire it with all your heart for yourself
~ Ensure your have un-judgemental compassionate support in place from day one of sobriety
~ Know that you are willing to make the radical changes necessary to support your sobriety
~ Know that you are willing to start the process of healing the pain and trauma of your past
~ Make sure you know where to get medical help if you need it.

So …..Heal the pain and trauma = SobrietySounds simple, well it’s not …..

The missing link to sobriety for many, is having a person or people who will hold a space for you with compassion for you to heal your trauma.

Which is why AA, NA, etc. are so popular, but in the end you need to stop telling your stories about addiction, it will not help you stay sober. It will keep you locked into your past, always afraid that you might go back into addiction. You will be a dry addict, not actively using in that moment, but holding your breath waiting for the next excuse that will validate going back into addition.

Sobriety takes
~ Healing while in addiction
~ Self awareness of your patterns, buttons, back doors. Not all at once, just start watching yourself, get to know how you tick.
~ A willingness to take responsibility for your actions
~ Understanding that stress is one of your biggest challenges. The more stressed you are the greater the risk that you will use. First stress of the day: you breathe deeply, 2nd stress you’re swearing, 3rd stress you kick something, 4th stress you’re yelling, 5th stress you’re white knuckling it, you’re overwhelmed, you cave and use. I’m not saying this is your pattern just an example of stress escalation.

Sobriety takes
~ Strategies, strategies lots of them, strategies are your friend.
No one strategy works all the time, so have lots

~ Knowing your ‘sweet spot’ as within that ‘sweet spot’ lies your greatest chance of success. It is those moments when you are so tired of the addiction dance you crave sobriety for you, as well as having practical matters aligned. i.e. a support system, a sober place to stay, medical support if needed and strategies. By extension know when you are most at risk. Where are you, how do you feel, what stresses you out. (This is a strategy)

~ Practice, patience and persistence – the 3 ‘P’s’ I used to call it and would use it as a mantra as well (This is a strategy)
If you think you don’t have those skills ……. Surprise! …. Yes you do.
Think of your determination when needing to score, the skills you used…. practice, patience and persistence. How often did you not score when you wanted to ……. yeh exactly, you got this!
Use those skills for your sobriety, it’s the exact same skill set just with a different goal.

Sobriety takes
~ Acknowledging your successes – Think of all those times you didn’t use when you wanted to, I promise you those moments far outweigh the moments you cave and use. Carry around a wee notebook and pen, every time you want to use and don’t mark it down, do not mark down when you cave, this is an acknowledging success piece (This is a strategy)

~ Mark each day of sobriety some how, whatever works for you. Make it visual. For 5 years I put a bead every day sober onto a string, and hung the strings around the room I lived in the most. (This is a strategy)

Sobriety takes
~ A willingness to keep fighting for yourself by doing your healing of past trauma(s)
~ It takes erasing your past history, not sitting in a circle rehashing your war stories, all that does is take your right back to those moments and keeps those memories alive.

Sobriety takes
~ Many attempts at sobriety, before you have a totally successful sobriety, sobriety that sticks. I have never heard of someone who tried first time and succeeded, I’m not saying it can’t happen it’s just not the norm.
If you were learning a new skill, trail and error would be expected,
so cut yourself some slack, at this point sobriety is a new skill.
You have found a way to numb your pain, forget your trauma for a little while, and now you’re asking yourself to take away the proverbial net.
That is no easy decision ….. it takes courage ….. you are a warrior!
Oh yes, I hear that negative internal dialogue, judging yourself, heaping guilt, shame and blame on yourself, ‘I’m not a warrior, what shit is she spewing,?” Blah, blah, blah. A lot of that may have been heaped on you from friends, family and/or society at large …. Guess what F_ _K them, they do not know your pain, your trauma, your battle, if they did they would have compassion, not judgement.
Compassion for yourself will be a huge turning point in your ability to attain and/or maintain sobriety, and increase your ability to do the courageous stuff, to heal.

My turning point as far as compassion for myself was about 3 months into my successful sobriety. As part of my healing journey the woman who was facilitating it gave me some homework. I was to read Gabor Maté’s ‘In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts – Close encounters with addiction’. I got the pieces I personally needed to have compassion for myself, and it rocked my world, it changed how I felt about myself dramatically.

Sobriety takes
~ The courage to get back on the horse if you go back into addiction
~ Learning what shakes you out of balance, your triggers, mirrors of self-reflection, your energy patterns.
Sobriety takes
~ Changing your life.
~ Cutting out anyone in your life that is an addict or linked to that world. That back door needs to be closed.
~ Closing all back doors to excuses to use, which means cutting out anyone in your life that uses substances or behaviours that were your addictions, IF they will not abstain when you’re around. This bit isn’t for life, but it takes many years in my experience before it’s not a trigger.
Now this then means quite often that to get sober you will have to leave a lot of people that you love/like behind. If you do not, your odds of being successful are unlikely. It can be a lonely road, but you have a choice doing all the work needed to become sober and leaving back doors open so you can fail with a convenient excuse, or getting ruthless and closing them all. You are a warrior you can take the path that leads to you winning the war not just one battle.

Sobriety takes
~ Forgiveness, you have to forgive yourself, you’re doing the best you can, and you keep trying
~ Cleaning up any messes you made while in addiction, owning your shit and apologizing for it, without expectation of forgiveness. You do it to clean up your emotional slate, regardless of their reaction. This is a friggin’ hard one, but really important. Make sure you have compassionate support when doing these pieces. You know that huge shit pile of shame, blame, guilt and self judgement, these are the additional pieces you added to the pile over and above the initial traumas that led to you choosing addiction as a means to survive your pain.

Another huge piece of unwrapping the puzzle for me anyway was with a biofeedback machine, from the HeartMath institute. With a simple program on the computer I was to get the program into ‘coherence’, the sweet spot where I was happy. So once I had that down, I started to play with my thoughts to see where some of my triggers were. I got the machine into coherence and thought one word ‘Cocaine’, my coherence vanished into the toilet, that didn’t surprise me, to this day 11 years later, I get butterflies in the stomach thinking the word.
What did surprise me, was that even though I got right back to thinking the thoughts that got me into coherence the first time, it took 3X as long to get me back to my happy place. This was shocking and illuminating to me. No wonder when we use ‘whatever’, the ability to stop gets harder and harder. We are less and less ‘at choice’, and this brings us to neurochemistry.

Which I know I said I’d deal with in this blog post, but I’m done for today. I’ll put it in my next one.

This is a touchy subject that creates strong reactions. If you think I’m full of shit that’s okay, your truth is your own, all I can do is share my truth at this particular moment in time.

You are always doing the best you can even if it doesn’t look pretty.

I was recently in a group where someone mentioned an addict with disgust and contempt. This attitude is quite common in my experience. I intellectually know it is about them, whether a mirror for themselves, or having been in relationship with an addict, or just general ignorance. Whatever it is it pisses me off, and yes pissing me off is ‘my’ stuff as I was once an addict for many, many years. That also gives me a unique perspective into addiction. Which is the reason for this blog post and at least one more to come. I don’t talk about my experience with addiction much anymore, as telling the story takes me right back there, rekindling those memory pathways of an old story that does not serve me. However my intuition has nudged me, letting me know it was important to tell it today.

Addiction is a disease …. oh bite me. Even if you believe that, it’s a disease that can be cured. Not everyone succeeds, but that is true of a lot of diseases. You are not fated to carry around the “I am an addict banner”, once successfully sober. More on the “successfully sober” bit in later posts.

So how I define addiction: any behaviour that you do repetitively to deflect your attention from your reality and your pain, that negatively affects you and by extension your life. That creates imbalance even if it is a means to an end. Addiction is not in the substance, addiction is in the behaviour.

We are an addictive culture, it is common for people to use addiction as a way to survive the stress of daily life, past trauma (acknowledged or not), fear of the unknown and many other things that make us uncomfortable. What is uncommon is people realizing and/or admitting it, especially before it is affecting their lives in extreme ways.

We learn to adapt to our environment starting from birth, adapting at all costs to survive. We are at the mercy of our caregivers whether they are nice or not and society at large. So we change who we are to fit in, to be loved, to be taken care of, and once we grow up we’ve often forgotten or indeed have no awareness at all of those bit by bit changes we made in order to make ourselves feel safe.

In order to feel safe, self-soothe or escape the pain of our reality, some of us retreat within ourselves, becoming meek and quiet. Others of us fight for ourselves and our childhood is peppered with discord within our relationships, or become people pleasers always helping everyone. Some of us become over-controlling as a way to feel ok, and others becoming mean or a bully to reduce the feeling of helplessness. Some start with addictive behaviours to self-sooth, often with food as the first addiction. Other’s become pompous asses to hide feelings of inadequacy. No one is better or worse than another, they are all a way to stop the feelings of pain that comes with betraying ourselves (remembered or not), the anger at unjust treatment, lies, deceptions, not being given unconditional love, and for some not even having their daily basic needs met, and having nowhere to go or no-one that believes you or in you. It is a way for some of us to stop wanting to blow our brains out, escape this reality and not feel or hurt again.

…….. So now you’re an adult.

If you are an addict it is okay,
congratulations you found a way to survive,
not everyone does.

I encourage you, to not to go into judgement, shame and blame, or if you do, forgive yourself as often as is necessary and carry on doing the best you can. This blog and the one(s) to come are meant to give you hope that sobriety is possible. If you’re an addict you are on a journey which is giving you skills and abilities that you can cross-train to attain sobriety. If you are not an addict well, here’s a window into the world of a woman who once was.

Shame, blame and judgement are damaging emotions, and counterproductive to sobriety. In fact they kept me locked into addiction like a vice.

A week in the head of the addict I used to be.
An average addictive week starting on a Monday …

– Off to work feeling depressed, overwhelmed, stressed, exhausted physically, mentally and emotionally
– I got high Friday and Saturday night, not Sunday as I had to work today, so that was something
– I vowed to not use again when I woke up on Sunday morning

Now the weekly game is afoot, because the first thing I want to do to not feel my emotional pain, is to use again.
– My infernal internal dialogue is off and running, all day long as usual…..
Judgement, judgement, judgement “How could you use again, why can’t you be stronger, why can’t you just say no, look at the money you spent, see how bad you feel now, but I want to use, you can’t use, I want to use, you can’t use, I know I vowed I wouldn’t but ……. I want to.” Rinse repeat, rinse repeat, rinse repeat.

– I need to escape from myself and my continuous judgement and internal dialogue. I cannot I am trapped in my own head.
– I need to escape the push and pull of wanting to use and saying no, over and over and over again.
– I can’t make my head shut up, my Itty Bitty Shitty Committee is working overtime
– I feel awful, physically, mentally, emotionally I am a basket case
– My neurochemistry is now so low my ability to even fight my desires are at a really low ebb.
– “It’s only Monday you can hang on until Friday Michele, you cannot work hungover you know that, okay, push through it, perhaps by Friday you’ll feel better and not want to use”

But nothing changes, I fight with my overwhelming desire to use all week long.

I have made it to Friday. I have accomplished sobriety for 5 days in a row. Hooray for me. Unfortunately I still want to use, and now I have been doing battle with myself for approx. 130 hrs straight I am exhausted. I don’t have to work tomorrow, I’m sooo tired of the battle, I hate myself, I am disgusted by my inability to not want to use, disgusted by my previous behaviour, what is wrong with me, why can’t I just say no.
I cannot hold the pain and stay present anymore.

– It’s Friday, I’ll just get high tonight, no work tomorrow
– F..k it I’m going to score
– Then I have to go about acquiring it, and seeing as booze isn’t my thing, I can’t just go to the store, so…. (Just imagine the stress of acquiring an illegal substance, that you may or may not even be able to get and now that you’ve said yes to yourself, you are let’s say … very determined. Anxious to be able to get or not get, anxious to not get busted. I was lucky I never got busted, and if you think getting busted would have stopped me from using as soon as I got out back then, you are wrong.)

And so I score and I use again,
– Oh sweet holy h_ll, I feel good and I feel happy for the first time all week.
– No more pain, emotional, physical or mental.
– Zippidy do da zippidy day, my oh my what a wonderful day!
– I am out of my body, out of my head, my internal dialogue is gone. I get to focus on anything other than wanting to use.
– But of course once it’s gone, then begins the slow slide back to the hell of the reality I have created
– I wake up sober in absolute horror over having used yet again and what I did when I used. When we mind alter with anything, it changes how we act and behave.
– My constant companions judgement, shame and blame show up as usual, creating a new layer of emotional pain. Addicts are really really good at beating themselves up, we don’t need any help really, we got this!
– Hungover and now feeling so bad about my behaviours on top of depressed, overwhelmed and stressed …….

– It’s Saturday – using last night has tipped the scales on my ability to fight. I don’t have to work tomorrow.
– I’m going to use ….. I’m done!
– I’ll stop tomorrow, I’ve got work on Monday …….

“Just Say NO!” ……… What a load of crap!
Now there was a campaign that wiggled its way into the hearts and minds of many.

What a lovely thought ‘Just say No”. Why didn’t I think of that……

All be it perhaps well intentioned, that campaign has done soooo much harm to addicts I can’t even tell you. That ridiculous campaign, became embedded in the beliefs of western culture.

Addicts say ‘No’ to themselves all day long, constantly fighting to not cave to their addiction, fighting their overwhelming sense of disgust with themselves, fighting the pain, fighting the judgement, shame and blame they heap on themselves.

I no longer dance with addiction, but admittedly I still on occasion eat too much sugar and indulge in zoning out with movies and tv. The difference is now I have so many years of sobriety and a mountain of healing work behind me. I have the advantage of neurochemistry that is not in the toilet, and the wisdom to know myself well and what strategies I need to implement, so that I do not allow those those behaviours to go unchecked for very long.

I now consider myself healed from addiction, with a predisposition for addictive tendencies. I do not fear falling back into the need to mind alter to get away from the life I have and am creating. I also now know that where my neurochemistry is at, which dramatically changes how I am feeling, and by default how ‘at risk’ I might be to depression. Depression for me was what was underlying my addiction in the past, and is probably underlying almost everybody’s addictive behaviours.

My next post will deal with how I got sober and some sciency stuff, to help explain our neurochemistry a bit more.

Q & A with a hand full of bullshit thrown in for good measureWe only react to things that we have ‘stuff’ with.
So why do you need that glass of wine/joint/codeine/etc. every day?
Imagine that you will never be able to get alcohol/joint/codeine/etc. of any sort again?
How do you feel now?
Is there a wee bit of panic rising, discomfort?

What is that glass of wine/joint/codeine/etc. doing for you? What’s the gain, there’s always a gain?

“Well I only have one glass of wine everyday, I’m not an addict”
“I only drink/toke socially”
“I toke, but doesn’t everyone and it’s legal now, doesn’t make me an addict”
“Exercising 3 hrs every day is good for me, not addiction”
“My doctor prescribed these”
“I only shop all the time to get the deals, and the shipping is free! I’ve got Amazon Prime”
“I’m just having a challenging time right now”
“I’m not an addict, I can stop whenever I want” (This is my favourite piece of bullshit)
“I only get high on the weekends” – This was my bullshit and my control mechanism, most of the time

Blah blah blah …… At a certain point we own our truth and things get better from there

Your interpretation and experience of these energies is your own. I can only share my personal understanding, I invite you to explore what they mean to you and their relevance in your life. This is really important. We gain nothing by ‘taking on’ others life experiences and beliefs. The juice and healing comes from within your own understanding, it is pivotal for your healing journey.

This cycle I am looking at the interconnection between The Twenty Great Teachers of Life and The Earth Count. Let’s see what their interconnection has to teach us. The relevant daily information on each energy is below todays musings.

The Interconnection of Testing and the Circle of Law (See below) ~ What you do today affects tomorrow. So what does testing, which teaches you patterns of excellence have to do with that? Testing comes in many forms. Standard tests that we all know, from education through to job performance reviews. You also test ourself every day with every choice you make, consciously or unconsciously. We know it when it’s obvious, the folks that are standing in front of the donut display and you just know they’re debating whether to ‘cheat’ today or not. (I have no personal experience with this LOL) There’s an energy there that is different than the person who has no problem with sugar addiction and is just having a donut that day. The former is being tested by themself. Oooooo I sense a lot of squirming, no judgement, we’re always doing the best we can. What happens with the choice of yes or no to the donut today, effects your tomorrow. When you say no to the donut, the next day you awake with no weight gain, no cravings for sugar, no guilt. (This is just a metaphor, some will not have gained weight, some will still have sugar cravings or guilt due to cumulative factors, let’s just stick with the metaphor). This new day, then effects the day after and so on. We all know this cycle which is why we have sayings like ‘Fell of the wagon’, ‘Getting back on the horse’, etc. So all your every day little decisions where you have a debate, are wee tests that teach you about how to attain excellence. They affect your future and how you show up in the world the next day.8 – The Eighth Great Teacher is Testing
Testing teaches us the patterns of excellence

I imagine most people would not automatically say they enjoyed being tested.
Perhaps this is due to our experiences as children. We learn at a very young age about negative and positive feedback. What if we could turn this around, and just see testing as an opportunity for growth? No judgements from the ego, just assessment from a neutral place. You might imagine I live in fairy land, well to be honest I think that would be really cool …… but no. From experience I can assure you it is possible. I can’t say that I always have this reaction, but it is far more regular than I ever imagined it could be, and there was a time when I thought that it was not possible. My itty, bitty, shitty committee/monkey mind/internal dialogue/egoic natterings were firmly in the drivers seat, and there were no stops on the horizon. I dreaded tests of any kind.

What I now know is, that I was hooked into a pattern of pleasing others, and negating my true nature. In so doing the judgement brigade was on point. There was no space for looking at myself with kindness and understanding, my little child was dependent on my parents for sustaining her life. She chose to do whatever was necessary to maintain that support. This created a pattern of behaviour that even as an adult persisted, even though this was no longer valid. I had never healed/unlearned the pieces necessary to let this pattern of behaviour go.

Jump forward a couple of decades with years of conscious healing work done, I now quite often burst into laughter when I have been tested and not passed with flying colours. I find humour in my mistakes, and for me humour is a great grounder. Clearing the way for me to see it, as the opportunity it is. An opportunity to do things differently, to do any healing and forgiveness that is necessary, and move forward.

I wonder if scientists whose job it is to do tests regularly to find out something new, are more healed in this area than the average person. They know that failure is the norm, but persevere until they discover the correct answer. Very young children before they adapt to survive know this too, they keep trying until they walk, talk, eat, etc.. Remembering these facts has helped me quite often, when I have been back in egoic judgement in a testing situation.

With your judgement out of the way no matter where it comes from and in what form it
takes, you have an opportunity for growth and excellence. Getting things wrong to get things right is just the natural way for us to learn.

So may you perceive your mistakes, as just another opportunity to learn/heal. An opportunity to practice being ok with imperfection. An opportunity to see your humanness, and may you have the satisfaction of seeing the journey of learning/healing, and be fine with the mistakes you make along the way.

8 – The Eight ~ EIGHT is the Number for All Natural Laws and THE CIRCLE OF LAW.Mother earth sculpts the substance and body of everything that lives with her Sacred and Natural laws. The Eight guides the forming of all that is within the future, and gives us a way to Reappear each day.
Come, Children, paint your Sculpted Form for your dance.
(Hyemeyohsts Storm’s Earth Count)

Lamat’s presence may be experienced as an inner awakening.
It may be a new truth revealing itself and developing.
Lamat may be a growth spurt,
with a sudden movement or development toward success or completion.
When Lamat is the Daykeeper,
you may find that certain activities move along more quickly and easily.
These are good days for manifestation
and for reproducing what has already been done.

Those born on a Lamat day may experience
a new potential within themselves.
It is an ability that appears to be unique
or different from that of family members, friends or associates

This is an excerpt from Mayan Calendar Voice of the Galaxy by Raymond Mardyks and Stacia Alana-Leah

Your interpretation and experience of this teacher is your own. I can only share my personal understanding, I invite you to explore what this teacher means to you and the lessons it has brought you thus far. This is really important. We gain nothing by ‘taking on’ others life experiences. The juice and healing comes from within your own paradigm, it is pivotal for your healing journey.

8 – The Eighth Great Teacher is Testing
Testing teaches us the patterns of excellence

How has testing taught you excellence?
What does excellence mean to you?
Do you enjoy being tested and/or testing yourself?
Is there any difference in your experience of testing when being tested by others as opposed to testing yourself?
Do you test yourself?
Has testing yourself led to patterns of excellence?

8 – The Eight ~ EIGHT is the Number for All Natural Laws and THE CIRCLE OF LAW.Mother earth sculpts the substance and body of everything that lives with her Sacred and Natural laws. The Eight guides the forming of all that is within the future, and gives us a way to Reappear each day.
Come, Children, paint your Sculpted Form for your dance.
(Hyemeyohsts Storm’s Earth Count)

Lamat’s presence may be experienced as an inner awakening.
It may be a new truth revealing itself and developing.
Lamat may be a growth spurt,
with a sudden movement or development toward success or completion.
When Lamat is the Daykeeper,
you may find that certain activities move along more quickly and easily.
These are good days for manifestation
and for reproducing what has already been done.

Those born on a Lamat day may experience
a new potential within themselves.
It is an ability that appears to be unique
or different from that of family members, friends or associates

This is an excerpt from Mayan Calendar Voice of the Galaxy by Raymond Mardyks and Stacia Alana-Leah

Your interpretation and experience of this teacher is your own. I can only share my personal understanding, I invite you to explore what this teacher means to you and the lessons it has brought you thus far. This is really important. We gain nothing by ‘taking on’ others life experiences. The juice and healing comes from within your own paradigm, it is pivotal for your healing journey.

8 – The Eighth Great Teacher is Testing
Testing teaches us the patterns of excellence

I imagine most people would not automatically say they enjoyed being tested. Perhaps this is due to our experiences as children. We learn at a very young age about negative and positive feedback. What if we could turn this around, and just see testing as an opportunity for growth? No judgements from the ego, just assessment from a neutral place. You might imagine I live in fairy land, well to be honest I think that would be really cool …… but no. From experience I can assure you it is possible. I can’t say that I always have this reaction, but it is far more regular than I ever imagined it could be, and there was a time when I thought that it was not possible. My itty, bitty, shitty committee/monkey mind/internal dialogue/egoic natterings were firmly in the drivers seat, and there were no stops on the horizon. I dreaded tests of any kind.

What I now know is, that I was hooked into a pattern of pleasing others, and in so doing the judgement brigade was on point. There was no space for looking at myself with gentleness and support, my little child was dependent on my parents for sustaining her life. She would do whatever was necessary to maintain that support. This created a pattern of behaviour that even as an adult persisted, even though this was no longer valid. I had never healed/unlearned the pieces necessary to let this pattern of behaviour go.

Jump forward a couple of decades with years of conscious healing work done, I now quite often burst into laughter when I have been tested and not passed with flying colours. I find humour in my mistakes, and for me humour is a great grounder. Clearing the way for me to see it as the opportunity it is, an opportunity to do things differently. I wonder if scientists whose job it is to do tests regularly to find out something new, are more healed in this area than the average person. They know that failure is the norm, but persevere until they discover the correct answer. Very young children before they adapt to survive know this too, they keep trying until they walk, talk, eat, etc.. Remembering these facts has helped me quite often, when I have been back in egoic judgement in a testing situation.

With your judgement out of the way no matter where it comes from and in what form it takes, you have an opportunity for growth and excellence. Getting things wrong to get things right is just the natural way for us to learn.

So may you perceive your mistakes, as just another opportunity to learn/heal. An opportunity to practice being ok with imperfection. An opportunity to see your humanness, and may you have the satisfaction of seeing the journey of learning/healing, and be fine with the mistakes you make along the way.

8 – The Eight ~ EIGHT is the Number for All Natural Laws and THE CIRCLE OF LAW.Mother earth sculpts the substance and body of everything that lives with her Sacred and Natural laws. The Eight guides the forming of all that is within the future, and gives us a way to Reappear each day.
Come, Children, paint your Sculpted Form for your dance.
(Hyemeyohsts Storm’s Earth Count)

Lamat’s presence may be experienced as an inner awakening.
It may be a new truth revealing itself and developing.
Lamat may be a growth spurt,
with a sudden movement or development toward success or completion.
When Lamat is the Daykeeper,
you may find that certain activities move along more quickly and easily.
These are good days for manifestation
and for reproducing what has already been done.

Those born on a Lamat day may experience
a new potential within themselves.
It is an ability that appears to be unique
or different from that of family members, friends or associates

This is an excerpt from Mayan Calendar Voice of the Galaxy by Raymond Mardyks and Stacia Alana-Leah